Might I Inquire?
by 90TheGeneral09
Summary: Who is Dieter Hellstrom? Where did his career in the Nazi Party begin?
1. Chapter 1- The Fight

**Chapter I- The Fight**

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**A/N: I was interested in the character Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom of the Gestapo right away. He's unusually young for a Sturmbannführer (SS equivalent of Major), and is inexplicably totally committed to the Nazi cause. In this story, I don't try to excuse the character's politics or anything he did (or might have done) because of them. Instead, I try to explain how such a fanatical young Nazi came into being in the first place. Monsters- if Hellstrom is one- are never born. They're made.**

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"I must say, I grow weary of these monkeyshines." Rudolf Hellstrom snatched a hammer off the kitchen table. He'd left it there since his return from the factory today, but then Dieter came home in that damned HJ uniform of his and Rudolf's temper hit the roof. Dieter had stood his ground, shouting about how the Hitler Youth was giving him something to do, how Hitler was going to change Germany. Now, though, he was the picture of adolescent fury, shaking his fists and halfway to tears. Dieter's mother, previously unable to do anything besides hover in a corner as her husband and son shouted at each other, now advanced, driven by an instinct to protect her son. Rudolf often drank when he got home from work, and when he drank he got mean. Hitting Dieter had long been a favored 'sport' of his, under such cheerful themes as "making a man out of him" and so on. Usually Dieter got out of those well enough, scrambling over chairs and under tables until Rudolf got bored or fell over and passed out. But sometimes he didn't, and afterwards Katya would spend time- too much time- in the kitchen with her battered boy, healing the bruises and cuts with that unique love only a mother can know.

But this time was different. Katya knew that immediately. She had supported Dieter in secret when he'd approached her two years ago, shy but plain about his intentions to join the Hitler Youth. He couldn't keep hiding his uniform forever, though, so this day had more or less been coming. Katya moved forward, grasping Rudolf's shoulder. He had to listen to her, just this once. "Rudolf, put that away- you could put his eye out with that!" But Rudolf shrugged his wife off with one move of his broad shoulders, and shoved her back with one hand, so forcefully Katya stumbled back against the china cabinet. "Get off me, woman!" he barked, and advanced on Dieter. Dieter, shaking with an intoxicating mixture of rage and fear, shouted through rising tears, "Go on, you old drunk! I'm in the HJ and it's going to stay that way! I'll go to all the meetings I want, and you can't stop me!" A searing wave of pain flashed across the left side of Dieter's face, and the youth lost his footing and crashed to the floor. A red mark was already starting to form where Rudolf Hellstrom's hand had struck him. Dieter was crying so hard now he could barely see. Above him he could hear voices; his mother shrilly arguing and pleading, his father's rough and callous- and he was laughing. Dieter pulled himself to his feet and cleared his vision just in time to see his mother, openly defying her husband at last, standing in the way as Rudolf Hellstrom swung the hammer- and brought it down on her skull.

With a cry of rage he didn't even know he could make, Dieter Hellstrom threw himself at his father- and shoved him out of the way. He bolted from the kitchen and shot upstairs like lighting. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, needed to go. Behind him, close but not close enough, he could hear his father's heavy footsteps, "the ogre's approach" his mother had said when Rudolf was not around to hear. From the bottom of the stairs, Dieter could hear him roar, "Only one of us is leaving this house, boy! You're no more a German than any of the rest of those worthless Nazis!" But Dieter was done crying now, done cringing in fear. He was no longer even looking for a place to hide. That time was past.

Dieter now moved swiftly, silently, and with an unshakable sense of purpose. He threw himself into the guest room, spun around, slammed the carved door shut and locked it. Almost immediately after the fists began slamming into the door, and behind him Dieter could hear his father bellowing still. His hands rifled through the spare sheets in the bedside dresser, and as his father finally kicked the door open with a well-placed boot, Dieter set his hand on the cold steel of the WWI-issue Luger. Given to the family by Katya's father, an old career soldier in the Heer, the pistol had always been kept in a drawer in this room, moved once in a while when Rudolf wasn't around. Katya had always insisted it was for use against burglars, the many armed gangs roaming the streets of Berlin these days. But maybe she'd anticipated this day as well. The day when Dieter would have to stand up to his father alone, and have only one way of stopping him. As Rudolf Hellstrom charged into the room, his 'runt of a son' locked a round into the chamber- and fired. The gunshot exploded in the close quarters of the room, but it was quickly followed by another, and another. While he had only meant to fire one round, now Dieter could not seem to stop. He fired half a dozen rounds, then a full magazine, long after his father had keeled over and crashed to the floor, blood seeping from wounds in his chest and an expression of total shock on his face.

Finally, silence retook the Hellstrom household. The smoking Luger dropped from Dieter's hands, and he backed away from it, suddenly horrified and revolted. He turned and bolted out of the room just as fast as he had come, taking the stairs two at a time. He threw open the door to the apartment- the Hellstroms lived on the first floor of a four floor building, but he didn't see any coming to investigate just yet- and fled out into the night. He sprinted down the block, his legs pumping until they burned, his lungs screaming for him to stop- and then suddenly he did. Dieter's legs flew out from under him and he crashed to the pavement, noticing the coppery taste of blood for the second time that night. A boot prodded him and turned him over, and Dieter found himself looking up at the black uniform of an SS major.


	2. Chapter 2- The Man in the Dark Coat

**Chapter II- The Man in the Dark Coat**

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**A/N: Given this one's short length, making it a two-chapter story might have been unnecessary, but it seemed to fit better so I went ahead with it. Slight cross-over between movies in this chapter- Herr Knopp, the Gestapo officer who appears in the 1993 movie "Swing Kids". I chose Knopp because the actor, Kenneth Branagh, gave him that perfect combination of a calm, subdued exterior but a fiery belief in the NSDAP underneath. That's just the sort of man who could have drawn almost any 1930's German teenager into the world of the Nazis.**

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With a sharp twinge of fear Dieter recognized him: Herr Knopp, the local 'representative' of the Gestapo. Dieter's joining the HJ had been just before a scheduled visit by the Gestapo, introducing themselves- and Herr Knopp as the local leader- as allies of the Hitler Youth. Men to be feared, yes, but also trusted and respected. So the Party said. Yes, some of Dieter's friends- and their parents- said the Party was not always right, and that men who answered to no one were not to the benefit of society. Yes, that was true. But none of them had been there any of the times Dieter's father had decided to add a few bruises to his son's slim frame. And none of them had been there tonight.

Dieter, feeling almost numbed now, simply told Herr Knopp what had happened. He spoke only briefly as he listened, adding, "So that's what those gunshots were about." When Dieter had finished, Knopp said, "Show me." An icicle of fear stabbed through Dieter. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to see any of that, any of it, ever again. Some part of that fear must have showed, because Herr Knopp said, "There is no place in this world for the weak, Hellstrom. You were strong enough to face it once, you'll just have to face it again. Be strong, and be fearless. Now show me where it happened."

Dieter took a deep breath, steeling himself as he opened the door to his family's apartment. A handful of curious neighbors had emerged by this point, but one sight of the HJ boy accompanied by an SS major was all they needed. Dieter made it well enough through the parlor, but when he got to the kitchen and saw his mother, saw the bloody hammer… one second he felt like vomiting, the next he was vomiting, retching on the tiled floor next to the neighborhood Gestapo man. But he was not alone now; two others stood behind him, and distantly Dieter heard Herr Knopp say something about "clean up the mess". When Dieter had spilled up his dinner and subsided to coughing, Knopp set a hand on his shoulder. "You loved your mother, didn't you?"

Dieter managed to nod. He stood up, but could not look. Knopp nodded. "I understand. Believe me, I do. But the world that took your mother is ready to take your grandfather, your cousins- everyone and everything that you love. You have to be strong and fight against that. Fight against the Reds, against the old order- and help me, help the Führer, establish a new one." Dieter was allowed to withdraw to the parlor again, and Knopp took a seat across from him. Soon the two Gestapo men came downstairs with the pistol, and with Rudolf Hellstrom's body. A vehicle was called to take the bodies away; both would be buried properly, Knopp promised, but at Dieter's request not beside one another, as would normally have been done. As Dieter's father was carried outside by two doctors, employees of some government department Dieter didn't know, Knopp looked at Dieter and said something he'd never forget.

"I knew your father, briefly. We fought in the same unit, as young men. Hardly older than you. But the war broke your father, Dieter. It wounded him, in body and in spirit, and wounds to the spirit can be far more damaging than harm done to flesh and blood." Dieter stared at Knopp now, his eyes red and his emotions in uproar, but riveted on every word. Knopp went on, his voice now deadly serious, "We could have won the war, Dieter. But we didn't. And do you know why?" Dieter could not find the words. Acid thrown up from his stomach burned his throat, and he could hardly bear to talk. So he simply shook his head.

Knopp seemed to expect this, a lack of understanding; he wasn't surprised in the least. "Not many people know the truth- or want to face the terrible simplicity of it. That's true of many things, not just the war. But the truth of the war is simple: the Jews. It was the Jews who bankrupted our economy, gassed our soldiers, and saw our mighty fleet scrapped by the English at Scapa Flow. Working cleverly behind the scenes, of course, but they did it all the same." Now Knopp's eyes blazed with a cold fire, one Dieter had too often seen when he looked in the mirror after yet another beating. Knopp stood.

"No more dead mothers, Dieter. No more families torn apart by the shockwaves of unrest the Jews and communists delight in sending across a 'beaten' Germany. Because to the world, that's what we are; that's all they want us to be, ever again. We can be strong again- _will_ be strong again. But Germany needs the Party, and the Party needs boys like you, who will lead us into the future one day as men." Knopp extended his hand. "Will _you_ fight for the new Germany, Dieter?"

Dieter Hellstrom stood as well. Facing the black-uniformed Gestapo man, Dieter did not look at him with fear and secret loathing, as so many were inclined to do. All the rumors, all the stories of what terrible things these men did- all of it melted away. For Dieter such nonsense had ceased to exist. Instead, he looked at Herr Knopp with something more than respect. He looked at Knopp with something like love. And when Dieter shook Knopp's hand, his grip was firm and confident. The shake of a boy fast learning to tread the path to manhood, and tread it unafraid. And his answer was one word.

"Ja."


End file.
